Camp Followers: War and Women - Research Article from Americans at War

Camp Followers: War and Women

In the eighteenth century civilians, both men and women, who traveled with the military were called camp followers. Camp followers included civilians in official, paid support roles for the military, soldiers' families, and civilians who independently sold goods and services to individual soldiers. There are no statistics on camp followers for the colonial wars, but about 20,000 women had paid positions with the American troops at some point during the American Revolution. British, Hessian, and Loyalist troops add from 3,000 to 5,000 more women to the total. Around 2,000 women traveled with Burgoyne's 7,200 troops on the 1777 invasion of New York. Two years later, 1,200 civilians, mostly wives and children, marched with John Sullivan's army from Pennsylvania into New York. In addition, an undetermined number of Indian women traveled with Indian allies to the American and British armies.